Early this year, both the anime and Star Wars fandoms went crazy over an incredible animated short.
Here’s our chance to have an entire series.
This 80’s anime inspired video was the work of just three people, one spending four years worth of free weekends developing the concepts, drawing the frames, and animating the whole thing — all with an insane amount of detail, another designing the sound effects, and the last supplying the unexpectedly appropriate John Williams-meets-80’s-hair-metal soundtrack.
The results were nothing less than stellar, and it became known as probably one of the absolute best Star Wars fan videos of 2015, if not of all time.
And we can have more.
When the animator, Paul Johnson, a.k.a. OtaKing77077, released his passion project half a year ago he said on the video description:
Don’t support me on Patreon, because I don’t have one! And don’t donate to my Kickstarter, because I don’t have one of those either. Instead, if you enjoyed this, give someone at your workplace, uni, school or whatever a random bar of chocolate or can or Coke or something. Seriously, it’ll probably make their day.
That would totally make my day.
The guy is clearly a class act, through and through. But in an expected twist, just a few weeks ago, the OtaKing77077 revealed the following in a comment on his channel:
Hello all,
My current job contract is ending in December and I’m considering what to do. One one hand, I’ll have infinite time to spare. On the other hand, I’ll have no money coming in.
So my options are to get another full-time animation gig or take some time off to do some actual full-length TIE Fighter episodes (with actual ongoing story and voice acting this time) and stick ’em up on Youtube for free (obviously. Since it would be a fan film and all).
Just out of interest, if I set up a patreon or gofundme page or whatnot, would anyone be interested in chucking some spare change in so I can buy food, or would it seem like really tasteless shilling?
Luckily I live cheaply so I wouldn’t need much to pay the bills and keep me in sandwiches (plus however much voice actors cost), which would free me up to work 9-10 hours per day animating a fully self-contained TIE mini-series (yes, with original trilogy-era lightsaber fights if you insist.
I have plenty of story material worked out – I’ve just had no time to actually do it until now). Like I said, this is just a “what if” question to see if enough people would be interested. Let me know your thoughts, either here or on muh Twitter or Deviantart page (links are in the video info above).
Basically, if you supply the cheap ham sandwiches, I’ll supply the animation. …Wow. What a crappy tagline.
OtaKing77077 started and followed through with his short film purely out of his love for Star Wars and animation. Millions shared it and it is one of the most liked videos of its kind on YouTube today. This seven minute and twenty-seven second short contains no dialogue and is arguably better than some of the Star Wars prequels.
If you believe in it like we do, contact Paul at his channel, and COMMENT.
This guy is worth it, even if we have to wait four more years.
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